THERE’S a lot of love in Pam Leadbeater’s kitchen.

Last week I met Pam and the family of Ukrainian refugees that she and her husband are sharing their home with. As we sat around their kitchen table, chatting over cups of tea and Google Translate, I was struck by the great bond between these people who, a year ago, didn’t even know each other.

“I just thought ‘What can we do?’” says Pam, recalling how she felt watching news footage of families fleeing their homes when Russia invaded Ukraine early in 2022. We all watched the News, and some of us may have considered the possibility of opening up our homes to refugees here. For most of us, it was nothing more than a fleeting thought.

But Pam went ahead and did it. Having initially made contact with a family on Facebook, she got involved with Sunflower Sisters, an organisation that has helped families fleeing the war to find UK sponsors under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. It hasn’t been an easy process to navigate, but last year Pam, her husband and sons finally welcomed Halyna and her children, who had fled their home in west Ukraine.

“My family has become bigger now,” smiled Halyna. “I saw a photo of a smiling family and I had a feeling that ‘they are good people’. Pam is a wonderful woman with a good heart.”

Meeting Pam and Halyna - you can read their story in the Telegraph & Argus next week - I thought what a huge thing it is to welcome into your home a family traumatised by war, forced to leave their home, jobs, schools and loved ones, arriving in a strange country, unable to speak the language, exhausted and bewildered. Halyna told me she panicked when she reached the airport and sat in a waiting-room for half an hour, trying to prepare herself for a journey to the unknown.

In times of crisis, there are good people who open up their homes. I know someone whose elderly parents have taken in Ukrainian refugees: “Dad’s in his 80s but said he couldn’t just watch the news and do nothing.”

During the Second World War, it was simply expected of people. Ordinary families in ordinary houses took in evacuated children, sent away on trains with a label pinned to their coats. My gran had an evacuee who became part of the family. For a young mother at home with a toddler while her husband was away for years fighting in Africa, this bright schoolgirl from the East End, fondly known as ‘Paddy’, was good company. Paddy later returned to London, but remained a lifelong family friend. Her photo was in a frame on my gran’s sideboard.

I have interviewed former evacuees who, as children, found solace and friendship in the homes of strangers.

I have also interviewed foster parents who’ve filled their home with children and teenagers over the years. And volunteers with the Bradford Nightstop charity, who take in homeless young people; giving them a spare room for a night, a hot meal, a shower and clean clothes, and help them access organisations that help with re-housing. I was once asked to be a ‘volunteer host’. I had a spare bedroom - what was stopping me? I don’t really know, but in the end I didn’t do it.

It takes a special kind of selflessness to offer up your home to those in need - a quality Halyna saw in Pam from her smiling photo on Facebook. If I’m honest, I’m not that person. I’d start off meaning well, but as the weeks turned into months I’d probably become resentful of people in my house. I can help in other ways, but I’m not sharing my space.

When the time comes, it’s people like Pam who step up and take action. And thank goodness for that, I thought, sitting at her kitchen table, as Halyna’s young son chatted about school in the impressive English he’s soaking up. Thank goodness for Pam.